Part VIII - Vestiges of the empire
When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who then was the gentleman?
“I was too
shamefaced to utter the imperial platitudes that fall so trippingly from the
mouth of those who make it their business to govern empires. – WSM, The
Gentleman in the Parlour
Kalaw. Former
colonial hill station popular with the British during colonial rule and
nowadays with high-ranking military officials for its pleasantly cool
temperatures, the grand villas ‘English style’ occupied by many a general in
summer residence. Surrounded by pine forests and misty blue mountain ranges, it
is a peaceful and quiet, small town located at an altitude of 1320 metres, 50
km from Inle lake.
See Burma
“
Quite
right. The slow train from Shwenyaung to Kalaw is an adventure indeed that
takes two long hours of your life. “Worth adding is that the train and tracks
are not in a very good condition and thus the ride is far from comfortable.”
The trains themselves seem to stem right from the colonial era, as do the
tracks that by the look of them have hardly been maintained since the building of the bridge over the river Kwai. The ride itself feels like the hand that
rocks the cradle and visions of The Cassandra Crossing and Sophia Loren’s
terror-stricken eyes came vividly to mind. But the views are unsurpassed, I
admit.
Shwenyuang station has a station master proper and buying a ticket for the grubby first class is an administrative showdown the likes of which would not be unbecoming at Checkpoint Charlie in the Cold War. Luckily we colonials had our servant Té deal with it.
Shwenyuang station has a station master proper and buying a ticket for the grubby first class is an administrative showdown the likes of which would not be unbecoming at Checkpoint Charlie in the Cold War. Luckily we colonials had our servant Té deal with it.
The Seven Sisters
“'I’ll tell you. If I married her I’d have to stay in Burma England
He paused for a moment and looked into my eyes.
‘Do you think me an awfool fool?’
He paused for a moment and looked into my eyes.
‘Do you think me an awfool fool?’
‘No’.”
The reverse of Kipling’s sailor’s Come you back to Mandalay , There's a Burma
The progenitor of the Seven Sisters in Kalaw may have forgotten about some such dream and given way to marry the local girl after all in the end. His
offspring, the seven sisters, serve meals in the dining room of the
distinctively British ancestral cottage on Union Road. With old photographs of
dear papa and his Burmese wife adorning the walls.
“It is an
error to think that because you have no train to catch and no appointments to
keep your movements on the road are free. Your times for doing this and that
are as definite as if you lived in a city and had to go to business every
morning. Your movements are settled not by your own whim, but by the length of
the stages and the endurance of the mules. Though you would not think it
mattered if you arrived half an hour sooner or later at your destination, there
is always a rush to get up in the morning, a bustle of preparation and an urgent
compulsion to get off without delay”.
Our guides
were our lodestars, our eyes and ears and tongue’s sweet airs in our midsummer
night’s dream; our drivers our faithful mules man’s best friend without whom we
would hardly have been able to cover a mile without having died at least five
times.
The one
exception being the guide in Bagan, who was in need of a career change. Too
long in the business. “He marshalled his facts with precision and delivered
them with the fluency of a lecturer delivering a lecture he has repeated too
often. But I did not want to know the facts he gave me. What did it matter to
me what kings reigned there, what battles they fought and what lands they
conquered. I was content to see them as a low relief on a temple wall in a long
procession, with their hierarchic attitudes, seated on a throne and receiving gifts
from envoys and subjugated nations, or else, with a confusion of spears, in the
hurry and skelter of chariots, in the turmoil of battle.”
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| Té in first class on the train to Kalaw |
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| Mandalay - UD and our driver, who invited us to his humble home in Sagaing |
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| 'Five hundred miles away from home' behind the steering wheel on the death road from Yangon to Pyay |
Envoi
“The days
followed one another with a monotony in which there was something impressive. In
the life of cities we are conscious but of fragments of days; they have no
meaning of their own, but are merely parts of time in which we conduct such and
such affairs; we begin them when they are already well on their way and
continue with them without regard to their natural end. But here they had
completeness and one watched them unroll themselves with stately majesty from
dawn to dusk; each day was a flower, a rose that buds and blooms and, without
regret but accepting the course of nature, dies. And this vast sun-drenched
plain was a fit scene for the pageant of that ever-recurring drama. The stars
were like the curious who wander upon the scene of some great event, a battle or
an earthquake, that has just occurred, first one by one timidly and then in
bands, and stand about gaping or look for traces of what has passed.”
The
End
v
With thanks to William Somerset Maugham and 'The Gentleman in the
Parlour'
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| Dining room, Seven Sisters, Kalaw |
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| First class, Kalaw slow train |
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| Green Haven Hotel, Kalaw |
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| Green Haven Hotel, Kalaw |
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| 'English style' houses, Kalaw |
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| Kalaw |
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| Original British colonial house - Kalaw |
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| Kalaw railway station |
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| Kalaw |
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| Pyay - 1830s |
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| Pyay - 1830s |
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| Zawgyi House cafe, Yangon - 2013 when in dire need of a cappuccino |
